"What are the chances that we'll see something with the finesse of the One X with stock software down the road? 'The Nexus devices are Google’s lineup,' explains Kodera, 'but in general, we're very proud of HTC Sense, and we'd like to continue shipping it on every device.' Not exactly encouraging." Big letdown. Not unexpected, but a letdown still. I will never again buy a non-Nexus device.

What nerds don't understand is that banning subsidizes will not make carriers stop having high list prices for data, in order to push users to 12-month contracts, they will just keep the existing system (high list prices - push users to 12-month contracts if they want to have cheap data), but will stop offering phones with the contract (bad).

What you don't understand is that detangling products leads to simpler, more transparent and better comparable products, which is a consumer win already. It will also lead to competition between data plans and between phones, not between packages of both, which is another win.

Anyway, I'm not the one who is seriously suggesting banning subsidies. My suggestion is to become aware of what you need and want and add it into your cost calculation concerning which offer is the better deal. As it stands this is quite difficult but doable.